Abstract
Designed around a formal language, first-order logic, relational database management systems act as mediators between the individual and the machine : they translate data into information. With the increasing volume of data distributed on the Web, a " collective intelligence " is now emerging, shaped by major search engines whose monopoly raises ethical and political questions. One of the major challenges of the coming years is to develop the technologies needed to find, evaluate, validate, verify and prioritize information, in order to build tomorrow's " Web of knowledge ".
